hell or heaven?
by systematic-alchemy
Summary: Willow just spent the last few thousand years (or one Earth summer) stuck in Acathla's hell with a souled Drusilla, Angel, and Spike. Now that they're back, the gang has to get used to a very different Willow and her relationship with the vampires.
1. Chapter 1

A red sun, hot dry air, a waft of sulfur on top of the stench of decay, clawing and fighting each day for survival with an unlikely family at her side, that was her heaven. This world, in all its bright color and cool breezes, tantalizing scents and easy survival, this was hell. And it wasn't always so. When it first happened it was the opposite. Acathla's dimension took getting used to, but after a few thousand years it became home. The saying was a person could get used to anything. Without equivocation she'd always agreed. But she didn't want to get used to this world again. It was soft, and she worried that it would tenderize her to be a fit meal.

"Willow!" Buffy's called from down the school hallway. "Willow, wait up!"

Willow turned to her. Buffy was still fresh and tan with a healthy glow that so many people here had. She flinched again when she saw Willow's face like she always did. The brand circumventing Willow's left eye and forking down her cheek unnerved Buffy as did the white geometric tattoos that covered her.

She rubbed the stubble on Willow's head and got her hand slapped away on reflex. "Willow, chill. It just feels good against my hand."

"What do you want?" Willow's voice had a trace of an English accent to it now.

"Nothing. I wanted to hang out with you." Buffy's apparent disquiet meant little to Willow.

"Whatevs." Willow headed toward her next class. She understood nothing in it without intense research, but it was crucial to her survival that she learn, so she did. Computers felt foreign, alien even though Willow had a vague recollection of them from when she was young.

Buffy followed her. "Do you need anything?"

"No."

"I know what would be fun: a makeover. Whatcha say? You, me, the mall all this weekend?"

"Mall?"

"Where the clothes live?"

"I have clothes." Willow looked down at her deep plum colored plated demon hide that moved and breathed well.

"One outfit. That you wear every day. Made out of demon skin and bone from hell. You need to blend. Consider it camouflage."

"Fine. We can get clothes. But I don't want to dress impractical like you do."

Buffy flinched again, and the bell rang. "I'll see you later, Will."

* * *

The library was quiet with Giles and Xander poring over books about Acathla's hell. The teen became more and more nauseous with every new thing he learned about that dimension. "How did they survive?"

Giles looked up from his book. "I don't know. I haven't found any references to lifespans in that particular hell."

"I can't believe Willow was in literal hell." Xander closed his book. "Research isn't going to help us understand her. She's not even Willow anymore."

"Xander, you can't think that way. She survived a dimension of torture and mayhem. While I'm certain that changed her, she's still Willow." Giles sighed and closed his book. "But you are right. Books will be of little use to us. We need to ask her about her experiences. Buffy was going to try to bring her here during her free period. Let us hope she succeeds."

"Yeah."

The bell rang, and the library fell into silence again. It stayed that way until the bell rang for classes to start and moments later Buffy and Willow entered the library.

Giles studied Willow. Her constant awareness of her surroundings, the way she moved silently and with a predator's grace, her weariness, all of it pained his heart. "Willow, thank you for joining us."

Willow gave a curt nod, but said nothing.

Buffy smiled. "Willow is coming shopping with me this weekend."

"Great!" Xander let himself hope for the first time in weeks. "Wills is getting her girl on."

With an awkward smile, Buffy said, "It's not like that."

"Then what's it like?"

"Camouflage."

"Well, that is also a good idea." Giles cleaned his glasses. "Willow would you be so kind as to answer some questions I have?"

"You can ask." Willow moved to a more defendable position in the library, back against a wall with an unobstructed view of everything.

"How did you measure time while you were there?"

"Spike had a pocket watch for the first few years. Daytime lasted what would be five days here, and night lasted for less than six hours. I never did the math, but we were there for more than two hundred thousand of its days."

"That's almost three thousand of our years," Buffy muttered.

"Sounds about right," Willow said. "I lost count shortly after that though. Had a book keeping track, but it was unneeded weight, so I burned it."

"You, you had books there?" Giles asked heartened by the idea.

"Not made of paper but yes."

"What were they made of?"

"Skin."

"Oh," Giles did a double take. "That makes a certain kind of sense."

"What did you eat and drink?" Xander asked.

"Flesh and blood, viscus, organs. There wasn't water there that was drinkable. But most of the demons produced fluids that would keep me hydrated and nourished."

"Eeew."

Giles cleared his throat. "Do you know why you haven't aged?"

"No."

"And the vampires. Do you know why they're immune to daylight now?"

"No."

"I see." Giles pinched the bridge of his nose.

"Willow and I have history together," Buffy said, "She remembers world history just fine."

"My family and I would talk about Earth often. Tell stories to pass the hours between battles. Early on we decided to keep it fact rather than fiction."

"What were the demons like there?" Buffy asked.

"Demons were in a word, big. But there were citizens of all shapes and sizes. There were even a few clusters of humans here and there." Willow cocked her head to the side then smiled. The door to the library swung open and three bald warrior vampires walked in, and Willow rushed toward them, jumping in the short male's arms before swinging into the woman's then lastly the tall man's. "You're just in time. It's Q and A time."

Drusilla wore her brands in spirals up her neck with white and pale pink tattoos in swirls. Her pants were red scaled demon hide with bones strung together for kneepads. Her shirt was made of black dragon leather with more bones serving as armor. Her head was smooth, and she lacked eyebrows or lashes.

Angel wore head to toe black of the same material as Drusilla's shirt. His armor was made of not only bone but rock. His head and face had stubble that accentuated the black almost tribal tattoos that covered his face and neck. His brand resembled a star on his forehead.

Spike's face was covered in white and blue tattoos that looked like words in a foreign language. His brands were lines for those tattooed words to sit on. His shirt was deep blue and plated with stone. His pants were black but different than Angel or Dru's, thicker and smoother. He also had a smooth hairless head and face.

Nothing dangled from them and at least they left their weapons at home this time. Everything about the four of them was battle ready.

"Not surprising they've got questions. But we found something more useful to do." Spike smirked at Willow. "Up for a spot of violence?"

"And here I thought we'd be bored. What's the opponent?"

"A young pup, barely a hundred with delusions of grandeur." Drusilla grabbed the information out of the air. "It's below us, but there's not much to do round here."

"You're telling me?" Willow punched Dru in the chest.

Angel took a swing at Willow but she dodged, grabbed his wrist and twisted it behind him. "Good. Don't want you getting soft. And the threats here are our size."

"Me?" Willow was incredulous. "I haven't been soft since before landing in Abaddon. And as for size, smaller is only tricky if you haven't been sparring with people your size for the last few thousand years." She jumped on Angel's back. "Buffy's taking me shopping this weekend. We should all go, we need to blend in, get camouflage. Told you she wasn't a complete idiot."

"Gee, thanks," Buffy said with a hurt eye roll.

"Shall we go, deary?" Dru asked.

"Are we stalking first?" Willow asked.

"Naturally." Spike appeared bored until Willow jumped off Angel and into Spike's arms again. "That's a good girl."

Willow twisted until she was getting a piggyback from Spike. "On to the battle!"

Drusilla and Angel walked out first hand in hand while Willow rode Spike out of the library.

"I should go with them," Buffy said as she followed. "Keep them out of trouble. I can't believe I'm saying this but I wish Faith was here."


	2. Chapter 2

Stalking their prey meant that Willow used a glamour to let the group blend in with the staff at City Hall. And Buffy's breath caught seeing her best friend and her ex boyfriend look the way she remembered them. Even when he wasn't blending in, Angel still pulled all Buffy's internal strings, but she hadn't even gotten him alone to converse. From what she could tell, his soul was in no danger of fleeting away again, but it appeared that he found his happiness with the other vampires and Willow.

Buffy herself was under the effects of the glamour, maturing her continence. They could slide past security and split up. Buffy followed Angel while Spike let off on his own and Willow and Drusilla took their own direction.

"Are you happy?" she asked him.

"What?" He didn't stop, Angel's mind on the job to be done.

"With Willow, and Dru, and Spike. Are you happy?"

"If I promise to talk to you later, would you let me do my job?"

"Yeah, sure. Who are we after anyway?"

"Richard Wilkins."

"The Mayor?" Buffy couldn't believe he was a bad guy.

"Yes, now shut it so we can concentrate."

Buffy recoiled from his bluntness. "What's the plan?"

"Recon. Find out what we can about him and his operation. How much of it is demonic, and who the players are and aren't." Angel gestured to a side hall. "You go that way. Meet up in an hour at the mansion."

She nodded and went down the hall he indicated.

* * *

When they were all at the mansion, Buffy noticed that there was a camp in what used to be the living room. It looked like they slept on the ground rather than beds. "Willow? I thought you moved back in with your parents."

"Kicked me out when I refused to get my tattoos removed." Willow sat on her mat. "So I agree that Wilkins is bad news. Planted a bug so I should know soon enough who knows what."

"I didn't think you used technology anymore." Buffy smiled. "It's good to see the old Willow coming back."

"As in a beetle spelled to follow conversations the Mayor has and transmit them to me." Willow cocked her head to the side. "He's talking to a troop of boy scouts."

"His perimeter is tighter than I'd have thought but it's only humans and vamps, so it shouldn't be that hard to break," Spike said as he curled up on Angel's lap.

"He's got spies all around town though, so he might already know about our family's return," Dru said as she lit the fireplace.

"It's unlikely that he knows where we were though. So he'll underestimate us, dear," Angel said as he put an arm around her when she sat next to him.

Willow lay her head in Dru's lap and Buffy felt like such an outsider. "How do you know he's not human?"

Dru leaned forward and touched Buffy's forehead, projecting images of Wilkins from a hundred years ago, then seventy-five, fifty, twenty-five. "That's how we know."

"Oh. I should call Faith and have her join us. Strength in numbers." Buffy shrugged.

"No offense, Buffy, but you'd be in our way," Angel said with a softer tone than before, even though it still had a stinging edge to it. "Faith would be too."

Willow poked Angel in the chin. "We should try to incorporate them in our trainings. Two slayers would only make our job easier if we come up against something big."

Spike chortled. "There's no such thing as big here. I haven't seen anything bigger than a Fyarl since we got back. And any one of us could deal with a herd of those. There's not much need for teamwork around here. We found a way home yet?"

"I can't even figure out how we got here, let alone figured out how to get home without Acathla. Giles destroyed our only way back to Abbadon." Willow sighed then sat up suddenly. "Anyone know what an Ascension is?"

"The Master ascended from the hellmouth, but never heard it in any other context for demons." Angel nudged Spike and Dru away. "There might be something in the library."

"We should clue Giles in anyway," Buffy said as she stood.

"I meant our library, but you should check in with Giles."

"Can we talk first?" Buffy asked her nerves cracking.

"Go ahead," Willow said. "It sounds like we've got time before the Mayor makes his big move."

"Fine, come with me." Angel walked down the hall while the others went up the stairs. Buffy followed him. He stopped in an empty room, not a stick of furniture. "What?"

"Um, you've been avoiding me. I want to know why."

"We've all been avoiding you. You tag along every chance you get though, and we don't get it. Are we really that fascinating?"

"Don't you remember?" Buffy felt tears well up.

"Remember what?"

"That we were in love?"

Angel's brow furrowed. "Huh. I guess so, but that was thousands of years ago."

"It was last year."

"Right, the time difference." He blew out a lungful of air. "Sorry, it must be hard for you. There's nothing I can do about that though."

Buffy's chin trembled. "Can't we try again?"

"I have a family."

"But, Angel… "

"But nothing. I. Have. A. Family. Now maybe you should go check in with Giles."

Her arms wrapped around her waist, Buffy left.

* * *

Xander and Cordelia were sitting in the library when Buffy showed up. "Xander told me you went out with the hell babies. How'd it go?"

"It, ah, the Mayor is a bad guy."

"Interesting, but I was talking about how you dealt with Angel and Willow and the creep twins."

"I don't want to talk about it." Buffy peered around the library. "Where's Giles?"

"Snyder called him to the office," Xander said.

"Are you really taking them all shopping this weekend?" Cordelia asked.

"I guess so. I'm not sure what I can do to make them look more normal with the brands and tattoos, but any improvement would help. Wanna come?"

"It certainly would be a challenge. OK, I'm there."


End file.
